


We Close Our Eyes

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2017 [34]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10354128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "author's choice, author's choice, wearing the red shirt"For John, who sees the world through ruby quartz glasses, every shirt is red.





	

John can’t cry. It’s not an emotional thing. He gets sad enough to cry sometimes. He’s just physiologically incapable. Oh, his eyes produce tears. But the optic blasts evaporate them before they can fall. As long as he keeps his eyes open, he cannot cry.  
  
He wants to cry right now. But he won’t. He won’t close his eyes, and he won’t make sound. He won’t make a sound because he’s a trained soldier, and stealth is survival. He won’t look away because he can’t, because it’s like a train wreck. Rodney is kissing Ronon.  
  
He’s pretty sure Rodney doesn’t mean it. It would be easy for Rodney, with his curious mind and clever hands (his budding telepathy and his cautious telekinesis) to be fascinated by Ronon, who exudes animal masculinity, who’s all muscle and no words and those terrifying adamantium claws. (John can blast holes through mountains if his optic blasts are unmodulated, unfiltered. Those claws still terrify him.)  
  
John looked twice at Ronon, the first time the man stood on his feet in the hallway outside the lab, shirtless and disoriented and demanding answers of Elizabeth.  
  
Everyone looks twice at Ronon, even Elizabeth, dignified like the queen she’s named after, sitting tall in her wheelchair. Even Teyla, who has distanced herself from the tension in the house, riding the air currents and summoning clouds for her lovely garden when she’s not teaching.  
  
John knows he ought to be focusing on young Ellia, the poor mutant who sucks the life out of other mutants. She’s huddled in her room, terrified of touching anyone. But John was just coming to the kitchen for a midnight drink of water when he heard familiar footsteps - Rodney’s; John has known Rodney since the days he was blind, when it was just him and Rodney and Teyla and Carson, blue-furred and sulking in the lab - and an unfamiliar murmur, and there they were.  
  
Ronon, tall and broad and implacable.  
  
Rodney, his hair red-gold, delicate in his arms, head tilted back. Rodney looks angelic.  
  
Rodney couldn’t be more angelic if he had a pair of wings (which Cameron Mitchell does, and John thinks they should be black-feathered).  
  
Rodney is beautiful.  
  
So beautiful John’s heart is breaking.  
  
Or maybe that’s because Rodney’s eyes are closed and his head is tipped back and he has surrendered himself to Ronon’s embrace the way he only should for John.  
  
But John knows that’s wrong. Teyla and Elizabeth have long drummed into him a partner’s right to choose, to begin or end a relationship. Two to make it, one to break it, two to fix it, Elizabeth always says.  
  
John will not close his eyes, and he will not make a sound, and he will not cry.  
  
But finally he does turn and walk away, as soundless as ever. He goes back upstairs without his drink of water - Ronon has Rodney pressed up against the center island in the kitchen, next to the sink everyone uses for drinking water - and he crawls into the bed he shares with Rodney and he does not close his eyes.  
  
He falls asleep eventually, before Rodney comes to bed, if Rodney ever comes to bed.  
  
And then he is sent scrambling out of bed. His head aches because he fell asleep with the damn ruby quartz glasses on, and he shuts his eyes, switches them out for his visor without thinking. It’s the battle alarm blaring overhead.  
  
John heads for the door without thinking to look or listen for Rodney, because he is the field commander. Teyla and Carson are urging the children back to bed, encouraging the older children to watch the younger children.  
  
Elizabeth’s telepathy reaches all the X-Men at once.  
  
It’s Ellia. She had an accident with Ronon, and she has run away. They must find her and help her before she harms someone else.

John is in the locker room and halfway into his uniform before Teyla and Rodney arrive. Apparently Ronon has been injured - can be injured - and Carson is tending to him.  
  
Rodney opens his locker and stares. “Why do I have the red shirt today? Who did the laundry? Is this a sign? Because we’re going out short-handed -”  
  
“To me, every shirt is red,” John drawls. Every shirt he wears is red, because from day one, he has been expendable. Rodney is necessary, is irreplaceable, but John has always, always known where he stands.  
  
Rodney turns to him, and his eyes narrow, but John’s mental shields are tight, locked down, and Rodney is too polite to pry.  
  
The flight controls of the Blackbird are cold comfort beneath John’s hands, but he has a purpose and a mission, and that’s all he needs.  
  
They find Ellia quickly and quietly. Teyla does her magic, convinces Ellia to come back to the school. It’s Rodney who helps handle Ellia with his telekinesis, so she doesn’t have to be afraid of touching anyone.  
  
John waits till Teyla, Rodney, and Carson are ensconced in the lab with Elizabeth, fussing over Ronon and Ellia, and only then does he go to the locker room and change out of his uniform, back into his pajamas.  
  
He doesn’t go back to his bedroom, to the bed he shares with Rodney. He sinks down on the locker room bench and finally, finally, he closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Oingo Boingo song.


End file.
